Starting a new pine cone!! This time I will not work alone....that is to say: my 'pine cone pal' Teri, from Maryland, USA, will make a pine cone at her own place and to encourage one and other, I will be making a pine cone here in the Netherlands. We e-mail each other and sent pictures of the whole process and of course the progress. Teri's pine cone will be a big one. Her idea is to make one huge circle, that goes on and on, until she has a king size quilt!!! How cool would that be???Mine will be a table topper made out of 16 or 24 small circles (probably sewn on 20 by 20 cm squares) or may be I will make a bigger one too. I didn't decide yet.

First job: cutting strips, squares and folding/ironing them into triangles.

These are the first triangle I made of the hand dyed fabric. I had to take another box to put all the triangles in, the other one was far too small. I guess I just have to start sewing soon.

In het pakketje zat ook dit handige gereedschap. Hiermee voer je stof onder je naaimachine door als je er met je vingers niet bij kunt. Ik gebuikte hiervoor mijn tornmesje of schaartje. Het was er al lang geleden en in het Engels noem je het een 'awn' of ' stiletto'. Misschien zou je bij ons priem kunnen zeggen, maar dat is het niet echt. Weet iemand de Nederlandse naam hiervoor?The other present in the package was this little thing. Teri made it herself. You can use it to feed the fabric through the machine if it is too difficult to do it with your fingers. I used to take my seam ripper for it but this is much handier and beautiful too. I looked it up and they call it a awn or stiletto I think. It was there along time ago too.I'm off making another badge of triangles, have a nice weekend,

Ik ga gauw nog wat driehoekjes maken,
fijn weekend,

Annemieke
ps. on 26th of januari 2015 I changed the name of the pattern from Pine burr into Pine cone.

Monday, 8 December 2014

New project... It is just an experiment and not finished yet. I'm quilting the red and blue scraps with the cotton (see the balls above) in red and blue.

I like quilting in big stitches with the thin cotton (number 8). May be this piece is just going to be a quarter of a whole quilt. I have to make three more pieces then and sew them together with the 'quilt-as-you-go' method. We'll see.

Some times the light is so beautiful here on the river, that I have to get my camera out, even if I'm still in my pajamas. This was in the morning.

And now my progress of the woolen crochet blanket. It is 72 cm long now, so I crocheted one third of the whole blanket I guess.

I hope my father in law, who did all the spinning of this wool, has some of the darker wool left. I almost ran out of it and it gives such a nice contrast.

If I'm crocheting I can cover up my legs easily see? He once made me some pair of socks too (the ones I'm wearing here). I saved them for my wooden shoes, which I hope to use again in the garden.

On our last trip in september to the Vendeé (France) I bought an old dolls bed at Les Sables d'Olonne (no website). It is made of wood and came with a matress and cushion, filled with excelsior (the stuff old teddybears were stuffed with). My home-made teddybear has his own crocheted blanket with ripples.

Here the little bed in the sun in France. I hope to make small curtains for it some time. May be some made out of small hexagons would be nice.

The matress and cushion were in the fridge for 48 hours, just in case some little animals were living in there.
The shop owner said the bed is from the 1930's.

The bed is totally foldable too!

Our view to the west at the end of the day. The beautiful sky is different every minute of the day and there fore difficult not to photograph, I think.

I get the wool in skeins. Recently I found a woolwinder at Meervilt, a webshop (and real shop with limited opening hours in Haarlem). It is very easy to make the balls of wool. The woolwinder is worth the money!

I still have to go a long way. the total height is 39 cm, I made 13 different rows. The width is about 2,25m and has gaint some weight already! My father -in-law is very enthusiastic about the project that I'm finally making something useful out of it. And I agree;)

Last two days I was doing a masterclass Amish quilting at the quiltshop: de Quiltster. Marcha is the owner and the shop is situated in a beautiful village Dreischor (the Netherlands in the south west part). I liked doing this masterclass for quite some time but just before this weekend I filled in the form to participate. The masterclass is given by Alexia Rosfelder (she lives close to St. Marie aux Mines, where the Amish people originally came from). She learned quilting from Esther Miller, an American lady who lives in Berlin now and is Amish. The quilt above is made by Alexia.

Alexia is very, very patient when she explains the technique (in good English) and shows us many times how to do it. She is a very good teacher and also told us a lot about the history of the Amish people and their life today. Wilma (with blog) ,one of the ladies who I met this day, was at my class as you can see in the middle of the photo. We discovered that we slept at the same B&B and we had a very good time together!

I was very lucky to have enough time to look around in the Quiltshop (click for pictures). I bought original apron fabric from the region we were in (it is the black and white, woven, fabric on the bottom of the pile).I also bought the coffee cup and some small ones to make a pincushion in (for presents).

At the end of the day Alexia (at the right) even showed us how to make a quilting frame while she took the frames apart to give us our own part of the quilt. Here we are....looking a bit tired but very happy with our experience in Marcha's (second from the right in the top row) shop. You can find her online shop here if you are interested in following a masterclass in may 2015. I can truly recommend it.Thank you ladies for the nice days together, we had a fun group together!Above from left to right: Binie, me, Marjan, Willemijn, Marcha and Alexia. Bottom row from left to right: Alie, Hanneke and Wilma.

Friday, 3 October 2014

The work in progress: I made just simple square blocks of 12cm by 12cm. I chose this size because of the embroidery blocks I wanted to use.

Like this one with the bunnies in the dunes. All the embroidery blocks are sceneries from my country: The Netherlands. I found this embroidery at the thriftstore (we call it 'kringloopwinkel' ).

There were exactly 8 embroidery pieces, so I used them all. Who knows who made them ? That is what I think when I take it home. The work is done very neatly. I always think it is a bit sad if such nice work ends up in a thrift store. Well good for me though..I love working with this..

When it is finished it will fit on this table.

And another picture, just because I'm so happy with it how it turned out. It took me a whole evening to design everything because I didn't have enough of some fabrics, so I had to start over a few times.

I like the crazy, pink and yellow horses from Tula Pink. And the big flowers from the Anna Maria Horner fabric, it matches the checker fabrics, big and small, very well.

This is one, with the owls, is of my favorite fabric!

Photo from a distance....and I put fabric on the back ( so called 'toile de beurre' in French and may be 'cheescloth' in English?) so I can embroider over the top. This is a bit of an experiment!!

I bought embroidery stuff during my holiday in France. Now I only need the courage and a plan to start to embroider.

I read this book: The last Runaway' by Tracy Chevalier. Such a nice book, very well written, about a young woman emigrating to America in the 19th century, about her life, a lot of history of daily life and slavery and... quilts! So I couldn't ask more and I will look for other books by Tracy Chevalier.

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About Me

Welcome to my blog. Here I'd like to share my progress in the quilts and projects I sew. I'm interested in many styles and new techniques. Besides the sewing you'll find pictures of other creativeness, my dachshund, nature and places of Interest.